Future reviews

3.2

47% would recommend to a friend

(711 total reviews)

Kevin Li Ying

65% approve of CEO

39% positive business outlook

Future has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 711 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Future employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Mídia e comunicação industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

711 reviews
1.0
Sep 24, 2021

Blowing the whistle: any positive reviews you see here were all written by HR

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

A paycheck. That's literally it.

Cons

1) Salary Don't bother going above and beyond or raising your hand to do more projects, you will NOT - and I repeat, will NOT - get paid for it. There's no such thing as a raise here (HR will try to tell you that each year a 2% raise is given.. that's a standard of living increase, NOT a performance based raise.) One year the company handed out these Future-branded decks of cards that had advice on them (e.g. how to talk to your manager, how to give criticism). There was a card in the deck about promotions and how to praise employees: nowhere on that card did it mention pay raises. All it said was "we believe showing our employees our appreciation for their hard work doesn't have to just be through pay, it can be offering an employee to work on a fun new project!" How is a new project going to help me pay my bills? Ironically, the amount of money Future paid to have these customized decks of cards created could have probably been put toward a raise for some team members. IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE. Why would anyone want to do more work for no performance based raise? Future is exactly the company that says "we have beer in house! we have ping pong tables!" in response to someone asking for more money. BEER AND PING PONG TABLES WILL NOT PAY THE BILLS. 2) Leadership/Management Their only business strategy is to keep acquiring companies. No joke, it happens at least once a month. With all that cash they have available to do it, and how often they do it, it should make you wonder why it's so impossible to get a raise and to hire people what they're worth. They have the money to do it -- they just don't CARE. Majority of the leadership team here just uses buzz words to make it sound like they know what they're talking about and that they have something important to say. If you hear "firing on all cylinders!" or similar office jargon, heads up: this person doesn't have one unique thought to share. People are dropping like flies here. One after another, everyone leaves; people see it and question it, yet management does not acknowledge it and doesn't do a thing to rectify it. Warm bodies, that's all we (employees) are. 3) Job function The job you were hired for will most likely change in a few months, and they will not allow you any input or ask your opinion. Then they get surprised when people quit, how weird! Every few months they'll do a restructure and say "this new verticalization we're doing is really going to streamline the business!" and then you (employees) have to deal with the repercussions (e.g. your job you were hired to do no longer being your day to day job). But don't worry, in a few more months, they'll change everything again, and the same thing will happen. You'll also have a new manager every few months because they truly cannot make up their minds about how things should be run. Or, they genuinely just have no idea how to run things and make it up as they go along. I'm betting on the latter. Also, they tried to schedule an in-person two day conference this month in DC (when majority of staff is in New York). In the middle of a pandemic. Right when flu season begins. I'm laughing as I type this because it's unbelievable and so irresponsible.

1.0
Dec 22, 2022

Accelerate to avoid the Death Star

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

The pension contribs are competitive. There is a profit pool which is a useful bonus (but like a bonus you can’t rely on it, or use it to get a mortgage etc).

Cons

This company seems to work on the McKinsey model of ruthless cost cutting, and constant restructurings and redundancies are a big part of that. Future behaves as if it’s in perpetual survival mode - no expenses, few benefits, recruitment freezes - though senior management are constantly boasting about how well the firm is doing, and the millions paid to the CEO is proof of that. They say they are unashamedly commercial which means that they take the outdated hard capitalist view that their overriding responsibility is to the shareholders (conveniently senior management are big shareholders). The CEO seems genuinely to believe that she is the only special one - queen bee over thousands of drones, the only one who is really ‘worth it’. which I guess is why she makes megabucks and Future has a long tradition of very low (below market) salaries for everyone else . Zillah is very clever and so of course she knows there is no business without content, but she doesn’t care about it or value it and editorial staff are seen. as just worthless content drones. If you’re young and want a start in sales or another purely commercial team this could be a fun place to work for a year or two. No one else looks to be having a good time. The London office is modern and clean but soulless, loads of brands/departments crammed into big echoing open plan offices, no sense of individual team cultures, or any culture, except the grim ‘We all row the boat’, ask-no-questions, work-until-you-drop and just-be -grateful -you-have-a-job mentality. It doesn’t feel like a creative industry. You could be in an accountancy firm’s office or a call centre. Teams are moved around the place with no notice or consultation. Comms generally are shocking. In cold weather this winter the London office was freezing. People were working in puffa coats, beanies and scarves. But there was no comms about it . Was it a malfunction? Had they turned the heating off to save costs? Did anyone care? No one knows. Looking at past reviews I saw that HR (People and no culture) get quite defensive here when people say the Unlimited PTO is a con and there is no work life balance. But it’s true. Lots of people barely get to take their statutory time off, certainly be flagged if you tried to take more than six weeks though six weeks is normal at lots of firms. But as you have no set leave you can’t be paid out for untaken leave. maternity benefits are way below standard for a media business, and work-life balance is rubbish. If they cared about sustainable workloads, if they were one bit sincere about staff welfare, they’d not have recruitment freezes and redundancies that force already overloaded teams to take on more work. Saying ‘we encourage people to take the time off they need’ is just an insult in the reality of it. Future is not a creative company. It grows through acquisitions and then restructuring the firms it buys, cutting out all the fat - including all the creative and strategic thinkers. It means short term profit gains but it’s not going to lead to long term growth. Future is like the Death Star, patrolling the media universe, invading benignly run planets,slaughtering their leaders and subjugating their people.

avatar
Future Response
3y
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, we do appreciate your feedback. We are proud of all of our talented colleagues and the work they do, which is why we've invested in our people in a big way, including early pay increases and increases in living wages. We're sorry that you feel the unlimited annual leave isn't a benefit, we truly do want everyone to take advantage of being able to take time off and that all colleagues have a healthy work/life balance so we've been working with managers to ensure they manage this effectively within teams. If you'd like to contact us directly we'd be happy to help address any concerns you have.
1.0
Nov 29, 2022

Don’t do it.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Unlimited annual leave, if you can get it. Although don’t take too much as you will get flagged….

Cons

I can honestly say this is the worst company I have worked for in my whole life. It’s hard to say there is a culture, because there isn’t, but it’s toxic. The work life balance is unsustainable. Redundancies are done on if they like you or not, not off the back of your capability. I have seen it so many times. You are either “in” or not and if you’ve come in via an acquisition and they don’t like your salary, you are out. There are a hell of a lot of suspiciously good reviews on here, which is not surprising as the leadership team have each been asked to get 3 of their staff to do good reviews. I have been told there is an internal tracker with links to each review so they know who has done what! LOL. What a mockery. The place is chaos. The CEO changes reporting lines every 5mins and the back office systems and org charts never catch up. For a company with nearly 3k employees manual org charts do not work. Many of my colleagues who were brilliant ended up taking time off for burn out. It’s funny, the best CRO for a 4billion FTSE 250 company ended up being the CEO’s early thirties brother, what are the chances?

avatar
Future Response
3y
We're sad to hear about your experience working at Future and would like to clarify a few essential points in response to your review. First, we believe wholeheartedly in a healthy work/ life balance. We strongly encourage our colleagues to leverage the Unlimited Vacation benefit as much as possible. Second, as we're constantly growing and looking for new talent to join Future, we indeed do ask our colleagues to leave reviews about their experience on Glassdoor to help showcase what it's like to work here. We don't track them — and with good employee engagement ratings overall, we're not surprised by a fair share of positive reviews making their way to this platform. Third, we are proud of the talented individuals working at Future; our multi-phased interview approach, skills assessment, and unbiased hiring decisions govern our hiring process when appointing someone to a role here. Last, we're proud of our approach to pay. This year put fair, above-average cost of living increases into effect months ahead of the new year, ensuring people take home more pay during a challenging economic time and before the holidays.
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Glassdoor has 783 Future reviews submitted anonymously by Future employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Future is right for you.